A Few Weeks In the Life of a Studio

All of the photos in this post show things I have finished in the last week or two. Some have been a work in progress for a while. There have been no days of volunteering at my daughter's studio for two weeks since school was ending and is now out for the summer, no part time job for the same reason, and the grandwonderfuls came to my house for Nona days, which gave me what would normally be driving time, as well as naptime to go, go, go. Son-wonderful-in law made that possible being their chauffer on his way in to his office!
When they were awake, there was also some time in the studio as well. One of the happiest moments of my life was in the last few days when I was at my journal table working on something, grandwonderful 2, age 3, was on the floor doing watercolors by herself, and grandwonderful 1, age 5, was over at the sewing table on the other side of the studio using the sewing machine. She has the same problem I do. She loves sewing on paper.  I had left the machine threaded, but she did all the rest of it herself. Amazing, but as I said, she is grandwonderful. It is interesting how this just sort of happened. It is just great to know that they love creating just like I do and can make themselves comfortable in the studio. G2 has made the place home before, but this was a first for G1 doing it as well and all of us at exactly the same time, well, fabulous.
Another recent day's star moments were when grandwonderful 2 was watercoloring, and I looked over just in time to see her paint water going onto the floor. She calmly looked up and said, "Nona, I've got this under control," before I could say a word.  She was also talking about her watercolors and instead of saying something like, "Do you like my picture?" she said, "On this piece of artwork, I _______ ." She had been experimenting on how different amounts of water affect the colors and blending colors. I can blame part of that on her art teacher auntie.
Well, anyway, you can be glad I am not posting a picture of my studio. It would be scary. I am taking a break from the task of putting nearly everything away and starting over to do this post. I can only go so far before I throw my hands up, grab the vaccumn and try to create surfaces that are not completely covered in stuff. The fun part of this is that I make stuff out of scraps. I have covered this addiction before. And the scraps get sorted and used as inspiration for what comes next. You can see lots of things in the pix below of scraps being recycled or upcycled or whatever the clever word is for that sort of thing now.

 

More zendoodles. I am not sure that is a word, but I am not sure these are completely zentangles either, so that is what I am calling them for now.

These are inchies for my inchie swap at Art Unraveled. I am hosting a swap so I will have enough different ones for a page in my Funky Book of Evidence and Memories class. The first set is grungeboard painted lime with garden mesh and beads. the second is quilted pattern tissue with a threaded button attached and a 10 stamped on it, since this is the 10th year of AU, and the third set is alcohol inks on acrylic inchies that have been adhered to graph paper and embellished with rhinestones. I think they look a little like stained glass. I think inchies look best in collections and I am hoping these colors will look great in the mix.

 

These are little notebooks, part of my what I will have for sale at the shopping extravaganza at Art Unraveled.  They are full of random papers like ledger paper, graph paper, pages from the Walls Notebook by Sherwood Forley, scrapbook papers, old school computer paper, primary school paper, Braille paper, etc. The covers are made from old cut up flash cards and scraps of paper sewn down, with a hand painted fabric binding on the edges. I had some fabric I used gelli plates and paint on from two different classes last year that I cut in strips to do the binding strips. These were not my favorite pieces of fabric whole, but I sure love them in strips. Another reason not to throw out art stuff. : )

These are hand painted canvas books with more crazy papers in them, also for sale at Art Unraveled. Each one has a little pen pocket inside.

And this is going to Art Unraveled as well, but it is not for sale. It is a journal more than 12 inches tall. Art Unraveled supports an organization that gets art to underprivileged kids. Some of the teaching artists are chosen to donate a hand made item that is in a silent auction for the 10 day event. This is what I will have up. I hope it will bring in some decent cash for the kiddos. It has some of my artwork in it, along with painted papers, crazy papers, transparencies sewn on some pages, tabs, clips, etc. and a few other surprises. It has big pockets in the front and back to carry things someone might need with their journal like items that they want to put in later, as well as small pockets in the front for scissors, pens, whatever fits. And the cover is made of scrap fabrics with scrap ribbon embellishments. Oh, big surprise. I have had this mostly done for a while. I just needed some time to figure out how to finish the front. I finally decided on circles like I used to do a while back. Long story. Today the answer came, and I jumped on it before I forgot.

 

Finally, these are little buntings (strings of flags) that I will be sewing down to the folders I make to house the little kits I make for each class I teach. The first two are made from scrap strips of papers I quilted on to a substrate and then cut in little triangles. If you click on the photo, you will be able to see all the stitching better since the photo will get larger. The biggest ones are about 2 inches long and narrower. The third set is made from an old map I cut into triangles and the last set was the perfect scrapbook paper for my heART quilt class. Each string is several yards long and held together by just one row of machine stitching. This makes them positional however I want to hang or sew them the second time whether it be straight, curvy, whatever. That is what is on the list next. I just gotta get the vaccumn to quit calling me first.